Critical diagnosis

A health care turning point lies ahead

America is rushing to a pivotal decision that could dictate the nature of health care for decades to come. Escalating costs, rising consumer demand, coupled with employers reducing benefits, are creating widespread unease. This convergence of factors virtually guarantees that change is coming. The question is whether Americans will succumb to the lure of government as rescuer, or will individuals and private organizations assume more responsibility for coverage, treatment and care.

At stake is whether this nation will embrace European-style socialized medicine, with its unaccountable bureaucrats making decisions about whom can be treated, as well as what type of treatment, when it will be provided, where and how much. Those socialized systems, touted as “free” and “universal,” ultimately can’t keep up with demand when the public insists on receiving every type of care. Eventually, it results in shortages and rationing.

In the U.S., similar government solutions are touted by presidential candidates promising to make health care a “right,” and to deliver that “right” by forcing those who receive it to pay high, additional taxes and hand over control to government overseers. In California, the governor and Democrat-controlled Legislature are bickering over which socialized plan to impose. And we’re poised to have a similar debate in Colorado next year, when a blue ribbon commission on the uninsured presents its recommendations to the governor and legislators.

But government as rescuer isn’t the only choice. Out of Detroit last week came a glimmer of hope that personal responsibility in the private sector may yet prevail as a result of United Auto Workers and General Motors’ labor negotiations. Ironically, the UAW was a pioneer in winning contractual health-care benefits from employers in 1950, taking advantage of tax incentives created for employers during World War II to compensate for wage controls imposed during the war. UAW’s health benefits expanded over the years to include full coverage for employees, even into retirement and for spouses.

Accumulating billions of dollars in liabilities prompted the UAW and GM to agree to relieve the employer of that burden before it’s bankrupted. The agreement calls for an independent trust to provide health coverage to union retirees and spouses, with GM putting up to $35 billion into the fund. But it will be up to the trust to set and manage benefits, something like a private 401(k) pension plan.

The agreement, noted the Wall Street Journal, “is the most striking example of a bigger trend sweeping U.S. health care: employers renouncing their decades-old role as chief healthcare buyer.”

Just 60 percent of companies provide health benefits today compared to 69 percent seven years ago, as employers continue scaling back coverage and even penalizing higher risk employees with high blood pressure or cholesterol by adding insurance surcharges.

Shifting responsibility for managing health care one step closer to the private parties who receive it, as the UAW’s private trust seems to do, may bode well for market restraints on the system. Even though annual rate of growth for employersponsored costs continue to out-pace inflation and wages, it’s encouraging that the increase in the rate grew more slowly last year. The slowing is attributed partly to consumers “paying more of the costs out of their own pocket,” Drew Altman, president of the nonprofit research group, Kaiser Family Foundation, told The Los Angeles Times. “This is more a story about costs shifting than costs really going down.”

The first step to curb prices is to make the people receiving the benefit more directly responsible for paying for it, whether that be through individually owned health insurance, health savings accounts or simply savings. Personal responsibility may be coming to the fore. And it’s a welcome development.

Can’t we just drop it?

Then there were two. But that’s still two too many, in our opinion. The St. Paddy’s Day 7 — anti-war activists arrested for disrupting the annual parade, in case anyone didn’t know — has been winnowed to just 2, after their first court appearance ended in a mistrial. But we wish the city would just drop the charges against these two, as well. That’s not because they’re innocent, but because we might snap if we have to endure much more of this. We’re all for justice being served and all that. But this isn’t a case in which obvious “good guys” and “bad guys” can be found.

The 7 evidently bent or broke parade rules in trying to turn a non-political event into an anti-war protest. The parade’s organizers and the cops probably overreacted when the protestors refused to leave. This played right into the hands of the activists, who are now stretching their 15 minutes of fame into a half hour, posing as victims of alleged police brutality and First Amendment rights violations.

If the city attorney is trying to make a point, it’s lost on us. It seems a waste of public resources and court space to prosecute charges that might mean a $500 fine and 90 days in jail for the defendants. If she’s that bored, there’s a Douglas Bruce ballot measure that needs monkey-wrenching.

There are important principles at stake, die-hards might argue. But whatever points there were to be made have been made, ad nauseam — including in our letters section — and the relentless rehash won’t settle any arguments or breathe new life into a controversy that’s squeezed dry.

But hey, St. Paddy’s Day 2008 isn’t too far away. The war will still be raging. And there will be another opportunity to show why Notre Dame’s moniker is the “fighting Irish.” Until then, can’t we just drop the subject — and these charges?